


Sequential

by tanyart



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-02
Updated: 2013-11-02
Packaged: 2017-12-31 06:04:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1028135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanyart/pseuds/tanyart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The year is 845, the morning of the day Wall Maria was breached.  (Spoilers for ch. 50)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sequential

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place right after chapter 50, and most likely will be jossed by chapter 51, but I couldn't resist time travel cliches.

It was the lack of sound that woke Jean.  He blinked and sat up, staring at the weak sunlight spilling into his lap.  For a dizzying moment, he couldn’t place where he was – not in the barracks, not on the forest floor or bleeding in the middle of a field. 

Strange.  Because he remembered his last moments tumbling off his horse, the shadow of titans crowding around, the feeling of a warm but shaking arm wrapped tightly against his chest.

But the sunlight, thankfully, was coming from a clear glass window, which – by some embarrassingly slow and almost painful deduction – meant he was inside.  Inside and _safe_.

With that crucial bit sorted out, Jean finally got to feeling all the aches and pains of his body.  He drew in a quick breath, peering under his blanket and clothes, unsurprised to find splotches of dark bruises down his right side.  The infirmary, he thought dully, and looked to the side to confirm the rows of simple cots next to him.

Jean shifted in his bed, wincing as the wooden legs rattled and echoed too loudly.  The quietness of the infirmary was unsettling, with none of the shuffling footsteps from the medics or the labored breathing of the injured.  He looked around again, confusion and the beginnings of dread crawling at the edges of his mind.

There was a man in the corner of the room, putting away vials of medicine in a cupboard.  If Jean listened closely, he could hear the soft sound of clinking glass.

He swung his legs out from the bed, ignoring the uncomfortable stretch as he reached for his boots.  Walking was good – there was nothing wrong with his legs.  Why was he even here?

His coat was draped over the end of the cot and Jean grabbed it, fingers running around the stitching and winged emblem.  He glanced at the man in the corner, a little perturbed by the man’s lack of attention but perhaps he hadn’t heard Jean get up. 

Jean slipped on his coat, rolling his shoulders back.  His green cloak was there on the cot as well, but he figured it would have been a bit much to confront the man in full Scouting Legion attire.  Not that he _wanted_ to confront anyone, but the weight of the uniform made Jean feel like he had some kind of authority, even if a pair of wings was most likely to give him looks of pity than recognition.

He was less than five steps away before the man turned and looked at Jean with a measured expression.  The stare was clearly an assessing one, and Jean stood up straighter despite himself.  He wasn’t exactly the image of perfect health, but he could already feel the unease of restlessness in him, some kind of unreasonable urge to get out the infirmary.

There was also something familiar about the doctor.  Maybe it was the hair or the eyes.  Jean couldn’t place it, but he didn’t linger on it.  He felt addled enough as it was – best focus on more important things.  Like finding out where everyone was.

“Where is…” he began, startled by his own raspy voice. He cleared his throat.  “Where is everyone?”

The doctor paused, glanced at the uniform, and seemed to take it that Jean meant the Scouting Legion in general. If the man was a medical officer, he wore no uniform or insignia which meant he a civilian not within the military or command hierarchy.  Jean relaxed his posture by a fraction.

“They just left,” the doctor replied.

 “Left?” Jean repeated blankly. He had been under the assumption he was at headquarters or one of the military bases.  It didn’t make sense.  “ _All_ of them?  Where?”

“Yes. Outside the walls,” the doctor confirmed.  When Jean did not answer right away, he frowned and then clarified, “The expedition?”

Jean expected a joke about oversleeping, some kind of awful prank, but none came.  “They left without me?”  At the doctor’s look of consternation, Jean amended, “Without telling me?  Without a note? Orders?  Anything?”

Apparently at a loss himself, the doctor gestured to Jean’s head. 

“You’re injured,” he said gently.

Bewildered, Jean touched his forehead and for the first time felt the bandage wrapped around his head and the sticky dampness of his hair when his fingers brushed through it.  There was pain too, stinging and sharp, but Jean had been knocked around before and he could tell the difference between a concussion-induced headache and what was just a healing gash to the scalp.

“I’ve got…” Jean trailed off, unnerved by how loud his voiced echoed in the empty infirmary.  “I’ve got to go.”

The doctor didn’t stop him.  Jean pushed open the doors, only to realize how disoriented he must have been when he stepped outside and found himself on a cobbled street, lined with houses and shops.  It was still early morning, judging by the hazy sunlight and cool air.  He could see the Wall surrounding the district from where he stood, so he must have been in one of the peripheral towns of Wall Rose. 

Jean had been to the Karanese district, and this definitely wasn’t the place—too small, too crowded to be Karanese—and he couldn’t think of a reason why Commander Erwin would relocate to Trost.  And who knew how Trost looked now.  Jean couldn’t guess, having spent his military training years trying to distance himself from his hometown, but he still knew, deep down.  He wasn’t in Trost.

“Chlorba, then,” he said aloud, stopping in his tracks.  Perfect.  The only Wall Rose district he had never visited.

Fine.  Not a big deal.  All he had to do was walk towards the Wall and find the outer gate and meet up with the Scouting Legion.  Or more logically head back to the infirmary and ask the doctor how to get there.

Jean turned around, pausing as a cart rattled by, the driver yawning sleepily into his fist.  He blinked, looking around and putting a hand to the side of his head.  Everything looked the same, all the buildings and streets muddling in his mind.  

He must have been badly distracted, coming out of the infirmary.  Probably too agitated and confused by his surroundings.  The worn streets and slopping buildings felt strange for some reason, but like the doctor’s familiar face, Jean couldn’t place it. 

And then it hit him, what had so off back at the infirmary, why it felt wrong – aside from the doctor, no one had been _there_.  Not even Squad Leader Hange and the dozen other officers who had had been hurt by Bertolt’s attack.  They all should have been there with him.

Jean idly tugged at his bandage and took in a deep breath.  One problem at a time.

There were not many people out on the streets yet, but pride had never been an issue for Jean to swallow so he stopped the next person he saw.

“Where is Chlorba’s outer gate?”

“Chlorba?” the woman asked in a bemused voice that Jean was quickly getting tired of. 

“Yes.  The Scouting Legion is set to leave today.”

She glanced at the emblem on his coat, but her gaze held longer at bandage around his head.  She must have seen something desperate in Jean’s expression; her voice grew kinder.

“You’re in Shiganshina, soldier.”

Jean stared.  “Is this a joke? 

“If you are looking for the legion, they are about to leave,” the woman continued patiently.  She pointed ahead. “The outer gate is that way.”

Directions obtained but now more thoroughly confused, Jean ran down the streets, eyes trained to the looming outer gates until he was finally close enough to see it clearly.

 And there it was.  The huge stone emblem of Maria embedded in the wall, unbroken and whole, clear as day. 

Jean stepped back, just as the sound of a hundred plodding hoof beats reached his ears.  Fighting every urge to just sit down with his head in his hands, he turned, feeling sick but all too clear-headed to be hallucinating.

Jean had found the Scouting Legion, all of its soldiers donned in their deep green cloaks and sitting proud on their horses.  He couldn’t recognize a single person, save for the one in the middle rear, blond and tall with a worried, furrowed brow; Commander Erwin, who was only a squad leader, judging from his position in the back. 

Jean made a strangled noise, earning him a few looks from the other onlookers, but he stepped back again, thinking furiously.

History lectures and past log reports flitted through his mind, snatches of old stories told in the mess hall by veterans and overheard in the barracks.  The last mission leaving Shiganshina was the 53rd expedition, easy to remember because that had been the year when -

“You aren’t going with them?”

Jean whirled around.

A boy stood behind him, balanced precariously on a pile of wooden crates.  He had presumably cambered up to get a better view of the Scouting Legion’s progression, but now he was staring fixedly at Jean with a frown. 

“What,” Jean croaked.  He knew there was only one loud, accusatory and _annoying_ voice that could pierce through his ears no matter what the age.

Eren, smaller and younger by years, pointed to Jean’s coat.  

“You’re in the Scouting Legion, right?” Eren clarified, unrepentant and brash as ever.  He jabbed his finger between the wings of Jean’s emblem over his breast pocket.  “Aren’t you going on the mission?”

Jean choked back the urge to laugh. No, he wasn’t going on any mission.  He wasn’t even technically in the Scouting Legion yet.  His ten year-old self was somewhere back in Trost, probably still sleeping in because there was no way he’d be up this early in the morning just to watch a bunch of soldiers march to their death.

But this Eren was young, without the lines of nightmares etched on his face, who smiled more readily at Jean and had no _idea_.

Jean glanced away.

“I’m injured,” he finally said.

Eren didn’t look convinced.  “You don’t look that bad.”

He was astounded by how Eren still quickly grated on his nerves.  Of course.  It was a predestined constant of the universe. 

“You see this bandage on my head?  Means I’m hurt.  I can’t go,” Jean sighed.  He could imagine how it would happen, introducing himself to the current commander and saying that he was a soldier from the future who just happened to concussed himself so hard he went five years back in time.  No big deal, no big deal at all.

“My father’s a doctor,” Eren said, rudely interrupting the start of Jean’s half-panicked thoughts.

“Yeah, I…” Jean paused.  “Ah.  I think I’ve met him.”

“Really?” Eren said, settling down on the crates.  He was at Jean’s level now, bright-eyed and curious. “Then you must have been really hurt after all, huh.”

Jean threw Eren an incredulous glare. “So you thought I was lying?”

“You didn’t look very hurt or sick."

Biting back a sharp retort, he willed himself to ignore the urge to launch into an indignant rant.  He wasn’t going to get into an argument with a ten year-old child, even if the child was Eren.

Eren’s feet drummed against the wooden crates, oblivious to Jean’s internal struggle.  He peered at Jean, hardly shy but his voice lowered, as if telling a secret.  “I’m going to be a soldier in the Scouting Legion when I’m older, just like you.”

It was a little sickening, the blind admiration and wonder in his voice.  He was sincere and determined, but when was Eren ever _not_?  Jean’s gut twisted, the old simmering resentment and loathing resurfacing in an instant.  He gritted his teeth.  Obviously it would be worse now, all of Eren’s short-sightedness and stupid idealistic dreams.

“You shouldn’t, you know,” he said, strangely calm.  “Don’t be a soldier.  Especially for _them_.” He nodded towards the Legion, still plodding down the street.

Eren scowled, bunching up the end of his shirt in a fist.  “They fight the titans, so they’re strong and brave,” he said, like it was the most obvious thing between the three walls.  He glared at Jean and added under his breath, “And they aren’t lazy and don’t get drunk, not like Hannes and the other Garrison soldiers.”

Jean stared.  Out of all the ridiculously impassionate speeches he had heard from Eren over the years, that simple and earnest statement – _strong and brave_ – was so beyond infuriating he was speechless. 

“Are you kidding me?” he hissed, drawing close and wanting to take Eren’s tiny shoulders and shake the naivety out of him.  He kept his voice low and hands at his sides, but only just.  “You think they’re strong and brave?  There isn’t a single soldier marching down that street who isn’t scared shitless.  I bet you they would all rather be anywhere else than going out that gate.  Trust me. It’s the worst. I-”

There were other things he wanted to say.  Stuff like how it was like to see friends die or what it felt like to be betrayed – things you couldn’t say to a ten year old, even to one as bullheaded as Eren.

It was all going to happen anyway.  Jean shut his mouth, but Eren had already taken a deep breath to open his.

“No, you’re wrong!” Eren said, loud and shrill.  He blinked, brow furrowing in confusion.  “You’re wrong.  Why are you talking like that?  Aren’t you one of them?” 

For a moment Jean thought he had made Eren cry, and wouldn’t that have been great?  An all new low for Jean, crusher of children’s dreams and making them cry. 

“God, it just figures, doesn’t it?” he muttered to himself, trying to still his shaking hands.  The full realization of his situation was washing over him, ice cold dread snaking up his spine.  He needed a plan to change things.  Everything he was going to have to do – maybe warn everyone, explain what would happen, his parents – _overwhelmed_ didn’t even begin to cover what he was feeling. 

Great.  Now _he_ was going to cry. 

“You’re wrong,” Eren repeated, not understanding but still determined to prove his point.  

His gaze was on Jean when he leaned forward, one hand gripping at the edge of the crate while the other came up to brush against the bandages around Jean’s head. 

“See?” Eren said, smug.  “You’ve been brave and strong.”

Jean shook his head, feeling tired and drained.  He was insignificant, nowhere near destined for greatness or heroics.  It was a sure feeling, knowing that he wasn’t made to be a part of whatever idiotic and delusional dream Eren had at this age – and _still_ would have, years later.

His head was starting to hurt again, a deep internal pressure underneath his skull.  It made it hard to think straight, but Jean couldn’t help speaking up.

“Later today when you see those soldiers come back home—when _some_ those soldiers come home—watch them come back through that gate,” he said, like it was just another dare, another dumb bet, like what they had used to do in training.  “Find me again and tell me if you still want to become a soldier, Eren.”

Shoulders straightening, Eren shot Jean the same fierce look whenever he was going to take on those stupid challenges. 

“Fine, I will,” he said, confident.  “It won’t change anything.  I’m going to join the Scouting Legion and fight titans no matter what.  You’ll see.”

Jean rolled his eyes.  It was an irrational kind of relief to realize his words hardly had any effect.  He couldn’t convince Eren of anything when he was fifteen, so it was obvious that a ten year-old Eren would have the same senseless conviction that was so strong he didn’t even notice Jean had slipped his name.  It should have made him angry, knowing that nothing really had changed Eren, or _would_ change him, but against all logic and reason Jean felt less overwhelmed instead.

“Hey.  Hey!”  Eren sat back, alarmed, and pointed to Jean’s head.  “You’re bleeding.  You all right?”

“What?”  Jean put a hand against the side of his forehead, just in time to catch the drip of something wet and warm with the tips of his fingers.  He pulled them back, puzzled to find nothing staining his skin. “I’m fine.”

Again, Eren didn’t look convinced, but that was nothing new.  Jean would have argued with him, but the ground started to fade underneath them so maybe Eren knew better this time.

“Oh, thank god,” Jean said, realization hitting him fast, and he shut his eyes to finally wake up.

 

* * *

 

The infirmary was loud, but Eren talking right into Jean’s ear was even louder.

 “Before you complain, my father was doctor,” Eren was saying, pressing the warm washcloth to Jean’s cheek.

“So I’ve heard,” Jean said groggily, trying to sit up.

“Yeah.” Eren's shoulders relaxed. He sounded relieved.  “Welcome back.”

It took a few moments for Jean to get his bearings.  His memory was fuzzy, confused images of titans and half-eaten soldiers swimming in his mind.  He glanced at Eren, who looked exhausted and solemn, and past him Mikasa occupied the next cot over. Armin sat at the end of her bed, the both of them looking equally as upset in their own private way, so something must have happened while Jean was unconscious.  Something bad.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I’ll tell you later.”  Eren pulled the washcloth away and handed Jean a glass of water with the sort of absentminded efficiency of having done it many times.  His shirt was stained with blood, all in different spots and various stages of drying, and Jean doubted that any of it was his. 

“All right,” he said, shutting his eyes.  He could hear Eren gather his things to move on to the next of the wounded. “Tell me later.”


End file.
